Will the tender cuddles of Trumpy Bear soften me to other Trumpist positions?

“A storm is coming,” begins the ad, uh, boomfully. The voiceover rumbles like the preview for a summer blockbuster, the visuals are dark clouds rolling across a menacing sky. “You cannot defeat the storm … I am the storm …!”

The imperative question: all very well and good, Mr Storm – but whaddaya selling?

In Australia, land without subtext, my top three guesses would be a) an umbrella, b) rainproof roof paint, c) flood insurance. We are the culture that, after all, pioneered the Bauhaus architecture of advertising slogans: “Wear a seatbelt. It’s the law.” And Australia floods a lot. When it’s not, you know, in drought.

But this is an American ad, and if the past three years of Trump-inspired madness have taught us anything, it’s that words no longer have meaning, extreme weather events are of no concern, and umbrellas are a French conspiracy to make the president of the United States look bad.

We can but expect only more Trump-inspired madness – and this ad sure delivers.

Aired on Fox News on 12 November, its script runs from “I am the storm …” to “the great American grizzly … introducing … the original Trumpy Bear!” Thence revealed: a woman on a couch grooms a 22-inch teddy bear, replete with bad blond combover and red tie. The Trumpy Bear, we’re told, contains “a secret zipper” – from whence you can “pull out an American flag themed blanket – then wrap yourself in the red-white-and-blue for comfort and warmth.”

The woman snuggles. MAGA – and kill me now; this world has moved far past my understanding of it.

After a mass social media befuddlement, internet mythbusters Snopes.com were obliged to publish an article explaining that Trumpy Bear was, actually, a real product. This is surely unnecessary in a reality that’s been forced to accept both that Trump is the president, and people really do believe what they see on Fox News. A thousand satirists with a thousand typewriters could not invent this in a thousand years. Remember when we thought that Tim Robbins’ Bob Roberts was a political horror movie? These days we’d be calling him a Republican moderate and imploring whatever gods there are left to still believe in that he beat Trump’s candidate in a primary.

“I’m a former marine, and I love to have Trumpy Bear ride by my side,” says a bald man in the ad, with a Harley.

Is the ad tongue-in-cheek? Does it even matter anymore? The lines between seriousness and lunacy have been well and truly erased by months of endorsing alleged sex offenders, “very fine people” marching on Charlottesville and babies in cages – so why not commemorate the misery in a plush, loveable bear? If the nationalist instinct was based in reason, it would cease to be nationalism. In July, Fox News claimed that a Connecticut official taking a knee to protest Trump was “disrespectful to the flag”. Protestors please note: tearing the flag out of a stuffed toy’s back is now, officially, completely fine.

Fair play to the advertising minds behind the Trumpy Bear campaign. Its conspicuous appeal to America’s hard right had this unrepentant leftist hitting their website in seconds to order one – $40 is a cheap way to challenge whether belief in the veracity of the IPCC report on climate change can withstand the appeal of a huggable-wuggable, fluffy-wuffy little face. My friend Charlotte went so far as to telephone the distributor. That’s where she learned that Trumpy Bear – like his first cousin the MAGA hat – was made in China.

I’m wondering when my bear arrives whether its tender cuddles will soften me to other Trumpist positions. Newfound forgiveness for trade war politics, perhaps? A fresh predilection for abandoning nuclear treaties? Easy friendliness towards the sham democracy of modern Russia?

Trump’s certainly not the first world leader to be immortalised in the form of overpriced, imported tat. When I was a kid, you could buy a plastic wine-cooler in the shape of then prime minister Bob Hawke’s head, inviting you to “take the piss out of Bob” with a twist of a plastic tap. The world has moved on, of course. I imagine somewhere a creative mind is already designing Scott Morrison in the form of a knife-wielding snake muppet, with a removable insert made out of tears for the refugee children interned on Nauru. Whatever Putin is, one can be sure that it appears far smaller in size than is advertised, with consumable parts likely poisonous.

It was no less than American president Theodore Roosevelt who inspired the name of the “Teddy” bear in the first place. Roosevelt, a Republican, had his face inmortalised on Mount Rushmore for achievements that included his not-very-Trumpy “square deal” initiatives – wildlife conservation, enforcing fairer, more transparent business standards, the origins of American welfare policy.

Two years of Donald Trump haves been enough to shred the last remnants of that progressive legacy in the Republican party. His example might as well taint the poor bears, too.

• Van Badham is a Guardian Australia columnist